5.  The applicant was born in 1983.
6.  In December 2002 the applicant was arrested on suspicion of having been involved in several violent crimes committed by the members of the Odessa Komsomol (Young Communists League) seeking to revive the communist State by violent means. The arrest report undersigned by the applicant is dated 20 December 2002.
7.  On the same date (20 December 2002) the applicant signed a document notifying him of his procedural rights as a suspect. His signature was preceded by the following statement, handwritten by him:
“I have been informed of my right to defence as a suspect and I understand it. I wish to waive my right to use the services of a lawyer during my questioning as a suspect and to consult him/her before the first questioning as I consider that at the present time there is no need for this. Should such a need arise, I will use the services of a defence lawyer at a later time, when I consider fit”.
8.  On the same date the applicant was questioned as a suspect. Before the questioning, he signed a statement similar to the one cited above on the questioning report form. In the course of his questioning, the applicant acknowledged that he sympathised with communist views, knew personally some of the Komsomol members suspected by the authorities of having been involved in criminal activity and had discussed ideological issues with them on various occasions. However, he was neither engaged in any criminal activity, nor aware of any such activity by those individuals. Likewise, he did not support any violent methods of reviving a communist state in Ukraine.
9.  On 21 December 2002 the applicant had a confrontation with G., another individual arrested on suspicion of involvement with the same group. Before the confrontation, the applicant signed another waiver of his right to legal assistance by way of a handwritten statement similar to the one cited above, on the confrontation report form. During the confrontation, G. alleged that several members of the group, including the applicant and himself, had robbed the “F.” food shop in 2001 to raise money for the organisation. The applicant denied those allegations.
10.  On 28 December 2002 the applicant expressed the wish to be legally represented. On the same date Sh. was appointed as his legal-aid counsel.
11.  On the same date the applicant, in the presence of Sh., was indicted for membership of a criminal association that was planning a revolutionary war against the constitutional order, including by participating in two fund‑raising robberies for the benefit of that organisation. When questioned in the presence of Sh., the applicant reiterated his earlier submissions. At the end of the questioning, the applicant declared, in response to a question raised by Sh., that he had not been subjected to any ill-treatment by the investigative authorities. According to the applicant, he did not see Sh. either before or after this questioning.
12.  On 23 February 2003 the applicant was transported to the Odessa no. 21 pre-trial detention centre (“Odessa SIZO”), where he remained in detention until November 2005.
13.  According to the applicant, he contracted pneumonia after being transported to the SIZO – a journey that took several hours – in an unheated vehicle and without any winter clothes. Upon his arrival in the SIZO, the applicant received very poor treatment for his pneumonia.
14.  According to the Government, there was no record whatsoever that the applicant had pneumonia during his stay in the Odessa SIZO.
15.  On 14 March 2003 the applicant’s father, a geographer, was admitted in the criminal proceedings as the applicant’s lay defender in accordance with the applicant’s request. Some questioning and other investigative actions took place in March and April 2003 in the presence of the applicant’s father and without a lawyer. During those activities the applicant reiterated his previous position and denied having been involved in any criminal activity.
16.  On 17 April 2003 the applicant requested that his legal-aid lawyer, Sh., be replaced by lawyers R. and D.
17.  On 21 April 2003 R. and D. were admitted as the applicant’s lawyers. The parties did not inform the Court whether those lawyers were funded by the State or privately. Further pre-trial investigation activities involving the applicant took place in the presence of his legal counsel R. During these activities, the applicant reiterated his earlier position and denied all charges against him.
18.  On 27 May 2003 the pre-trial investigation was completed and the applicant, along with ten other individuals implicated in criminal activity as members of the Komsomol group, was committed to stand trial before the Odessa Regional Court of Appeal (“the Regional Court”), acting as a first‑instance tribunal. He was accused of belonging to a criminal association, two armed robberies and an act of terrorism (arson of a private vehicle).
19.  Between 27 May and 24 July 2003 the applicant studied the case file.
20.  On 17 June 2003 the applicant requested that R. and D. be replaced by M. as his new legal counsel, which request was granted. It is not clear from the case file whether M. was funded privately or by the State.
21.  On 24 July 2003 the applicant and his lawyer M. signed an affidavit that they had studied the case file in full and had no procedural requests at the material time. According to the check-out log signed by the applicant, he was studying one to three volumes of case-file materials per working day, and took thirty-one days in total to finish the forty-four volume case file.
22.  On 1 September 2003 the Regional Court held a preparatory hearing of the case at which three of the applicant’s co-defendants, R., S. and D., requested additional time to study the case file. Their requests were allowed.
23.  On 24 September 2003 the court held a further hearing, in the course of which the applicant requested additional time to study the case file. His request was rejected.
24.  Throughout the trial, the applicant reiterated his earlier position and denied any involvement in criminal activity. He further alleged that he had in fact been arrested on 19 December 2002 and subjected to ill-treatment to break his moral resistance. His co-defendants who were testifying against him had also been ill-treated and coerced to do so by the investigative authorities.
25.  In November 2003 B., one of the applicant’s co-defendants, died in detention and the remaining defendants alleged that his death had resulted from torture.
26.  Following a court order to investigate the circumstances of B.’s death, the prosecutor’s office reported that there was no torture case to answer, as B. had died of cancer.
27.  According to the applicant, he often felt exhausted during the hearings because of the poor conditions of detention and transportation to the court premises and the lack of catering arrangements. In particular, during his stay in the SIZO, he was frequently moved from cell to cell and often arbitrarily placed in the quarantine block with new arrivals who were subjected to monitoring for contagious diseases. The applicant and his co‑detainees were not allowed to leave the cells except for a one-hour walk per day. The cells sometimes housed twenty or more inmates per ten-bed cell, so the detainees had to take turns to sleep. As a result, the applicant’s mental alertness during trial was impeded by sleep deprivation. Furthermore, on court days the applicant was often taken out of his cell at about 6 a.m. and placed in a special transit box, which measured some 15‑20 square meters, had no windows and no heating, with twenty to thirty other inmates. He had to wait several hours in those conditions for a prison van to come. Following his return from the court, he again had to wait for several hours in the same box before being escorted to his regular cell. As a result, he missed meal times and was often left hungry. The so-called “packed lunches” provided to the applicant on court days, consisted only of bread. Sometimes hot meals were made available in the court building, but their supply was irregular. In addition, the applicant received no medical assistance in SIZO for his vegetative-vascular dystonia and mitral valve prolapse (a chronic heart dysfunction).
28.  According to the Government, the conditions of the applicant’s detention were satisfactory. The cells, in which the applicant was held in the Odessa SIZO, measured between 7.6 and 8.5 square meters and accommodated four inmates, each of whom had an individual sleeping bunk. Each cell also had windows, sanitary facilities, running water, electric lighting and heating. Pursuant to the relevant regulations, detainees enjoyed daily one-hour walks in the courtyard and weekly access to the shower facility. The applicant’s transportation on court days was organised without prohibitive delays and, pursuant to the applicable legal regulations, the SIZO administration always arranged for him to have three meals a day. Pursuant to an order of the SIZO governor of 11 August 2003, during his trial the applicant had received hot lunches organised on the court premises by officer K. during the weeks in which more than three hearing days were planned. When the court weeks were shorter, they received packed lunches. Other meals were served to the applicant in the SIZO. The applicant’s health, including his vascular and heart conditions, was duly and regularly monitored by the SIZO medical professionals and remained stable throughout his detention. On two occasions (12 March and 2 August 2004), the applicant was also examined by a cardiologist from the Odessa Regional Hospital, who prescribed him outpatient supportive treatment followed through in the SIZO. In addition, on several occasions the applicant was also seen by civilian medical specialists, including an otolaryngologist, a neurologist, a surgeon, a urologist and an ophthalmologist, who concluded that he was in good health. In March 2004 the applicant was examined by several civilian medical professionals and declared to be in good health and fit to take part in the trial.
29.  On 10 November 2003 the Regional Court removed the applicant’s father from the proceedings as his lay defender on the basis that he had repeatedly breached procedural rules notwithstanding prior warnings. In particular, he had attempted to transfer to the applicant certain materials which, in the court’s view, could have prejudiced the establishment of the facts of the case.
30.  On 19 July 2004 the Regional Court found the applicant guilty of belonging to a criminal association, as a member of which he had taken part in two armed robberies. It also found him guilty of setting a private vehicle on fire, having re-qualified the relevant charge from “an act of terrorism” to “hooliganism”. The court dismissed the allegations that some of the defendants had been ill-treated by the investigative authorities as unsubstantiated. The applicant was convicted to twelve years’ imprisonment and a confiscation of his property.
31.  The applicant lodged a cassation appeal before the Supreme Court of Ukraine. According to an uncertified copy of his appeal in the case file, he alleged that he was innocent of any criminal wrongdoings and challenged the assessment of evidence, substantiating his allegations with numerous references to the relevant pages in the case-file materials. The applicant further argued that all the evidence collected during the pre-trial investigation should have been declared inadmissible as it had been obtained in breach of procedural guarantees. In particular, the applicant had been denied legal assistance following his arrest and had not been legally represented for most of the investigation. Furthermore, the authorities had tortured his co-defendants in order to force them to confess. He also alleged that his arrest, which had been effected off the record on 19 December 2002, was unlawful and that he had had very limited time and facilities to familiarise himself with the case file.
32.  On 28 and 29 September 2004 the applicant signed an affidavit that he had no claims against the Odessa SIZO administration and that he had not been subjected to any ill-treatment during his detention in the facility.
33.  On 26 July 2005 the Supreme Court held a hearing in the applicant’s case. The applicant, represented by K., a new lawyer, was present during this hearing and gave oral submissions in which he pleaded innocent. On the same day the Supreme Court delivered a judgment acquitting the applicant of having set a vehicle on fire for want of evidence of his participation in that crime. The court upheld the other convictions, having noted, in particular, that several eyewitnesses, including victims and some of the applicant’s co-defendants, when questioned in open court had testified that the applicant had participated in the robberies imputed to him. The Supreme Court rejected as unsubstantiated the allegations that the applicant’s co‑defendants had been ill-treated and the submissions concerning the breach of his right to mount defence and to study the case-file materials, and upheld the applicant’s sentence.
34.  In February 2009 the applicant’s lawyer, based in Moscow, Russia, asked the Regional Court to send him by post a number of documents from the applicant’s case file.
35.  On 25 June 2009 the court refused that request. It pointed out, in particular, that it had no facilities to prepare and send the copies and that the lawyer could study the case file on the court’s premises.
36.  In November 2005 the applicant was transported to the Gubnyk colony to serve his sentence. According to him, the train carriages were poorly ventilated and overcrowded, and detainees were not allowed to use the toilets as and when required. On an unspecified date at the end of 2005 the applicant was further transferred to Vinnitsa prison no. 1, where he remained at least until December 2006. According to him, during the first month of his stay in the prison, he was arbitrarily held in the unit for prisoners serving life sentences.
37.  Following his arrival, the applicant was examined by prison medical staff and found to be generally in good health.
38.  In 2006 the applicant received seven short-term visits from his parents (on 27 January, 29 March, 12 May, 19 June, 11 September, 6 November and 25 December) and had one telephone conversation with them (on 18 December).
39.  According to the Government, on 15 December 2006 the applicant also had a visit from his parents that qualified as “extended” under the provisions of Articles 110 and 140 of the Code on the Enforcement of Sentences. The applicant alleged that the visit at issue did not qualify as “extended” because the above provisions envisaged the opportunity for detainees to share hostel facilities with the visitors for up to three days, whereas he had simply been allowed to communicate with his parents in one of the administrative offices for longer than usual and without the presence of a prison guard.
40.  In July 2006 the Committee for Protection of Political Prisoners, a Russian-based public-interest group, complained to the Ukrainian Ombudsman that the applicant had been arbitrarily deprived of extended visits from his family and restricted to sending one letter per month.
41.  On an unspecified date that complaint was transferred to the Vinnytsya Regional Prosecutor’s Office for investigation.
42.  On 26 September 2006 the prosecutor’s office informed the committee that in his explanations to the inquiry officer, the applicant himself had denied having any other claims against the prison administration. It further noted that, pursuant to the entry into force in 2004 of the legislative provision allowing high-security prison detainees to receive “extended” (co-habitation) family visits, the Vinnytsya prison was constructing a hostel facility on its grounds, which was expected to be completed soon. In the meantime, the applicant could facilitate contacts with his parents, for instance, by requesting additional short-term visits or telephone conversations.
43.  According to the applicant, the hostel referred to by the prosecutor was not completed until the end of 2007.
44.  In April 2012 the applicant was transferred to the Kryzhopil correctional centre, which had a milder regime, to continue serving his sentence.